Quotes from Fernando Pessoa

Para ser grande, sê inteiro: nada Teu exagera ou exclui. Sê todo em cada coisa. Põe quanto és No mínimo que fazes. Assim em cada lago a lua toda Brilha, porque alta vive.

Deus quer, o homem sonha, a obra nasce.

There's enough metaphysics in not thinking about anything.

Na vida de hoje, o mundo só pertence aos estúpidos, aos insensíveis e aos agitados. O direito a viver e a triunfar conquista-se hoje quase pelos mesmos processos por que se conquista o internamento num manicómio: a incapacidade de pensar, a amoralidade e a hiperexcitação.

If the heart could think it would stop beating.

There's a thin sheet of glass between me and life. However clearly I see and understand life, I can't touch it.

All letters of love are Ridiculous. They wouldn't be love letters if they were not Ridiculous.

XIII Lightly, lightly, very lightly A very light wind passes, And it goes away just as lightly, And I don't know what I'm thinking, Nor do I wish to know.

Escrever é esquecer. A literatura é a maneira mais agradável de ignorar a vida

I wander as I walk straight ahead. When it's time, I show up at the office like everyone else. When it's not time, I go to the river to gaze at the river, like everyone else. I'm no different. And behind all this, O sky my sky, I secretly constellate and have my infinity.

Give to each emotion a personality, to each state of mind a soul.

Everything that happens where we live happens in us. Everything that ceases in what we see ceases in us. Everything that has been, if we saw it when it was, was taken from us when it went away.

That is my morality or my metaphysics or me myself: a passer-by in everything, even my own soul. I belong to nothing, I desire nothing, I am nothing except an abstract centre of impersonal sensations, a sentient mirror fallen from the wall but still turned to reflect the diversity of the world.

I can breathe easier now that the appointments are behind me. I missed them all, through deliberate negligence, Having waited for the urge to go, which I knew wouldn't come. I'm free, and against organized, clothed society. I'm naked and plunge into the water of my imagination.

O night in which the stars feign light, O night that alone is the size of the Universe, make me, body and soul, part of your body, so that—being mere darkness—I'll lose myself and become night as well, without any dreams as stars within me, nor a hoped-for sun shining with the future.

I am still obsessed with creating a false world, and will be until I die.

I don't have enough money to be a dreamer.

I try to say what I feel Without thinking about what I feel. I try to place words right next to my idea So that I won't need a corridor Of thought leading to words.

Perhaps it's my destiny to remain a book-keeper for ever and for poetry and literature to remain simply butterflies that alight on my head and merely underline my own ridiculousness by their very beauty.

And leaning out the window, enjoying the day above the varying volume of the entire city, only one thought swells my soul – the intimate will to die, to finish, not to see more light over any city, not to think, not to feel, to leave behind like wrapping paper the course of the sun and the days, to rid myself, at the edge of the grand bed, as of a heavy suit, of the involuntary effort to be.

To consider our greatest anguish an incident of no importance, not just in terms of the life of the universe, but in terms of our own souls, is the beginning of knowledge.

Let's adopt all the poses and gestures of something we aren't and don't wish to be, and don't even wish to be taken for being. Let's buy books so as not to read them; let's go to concerts without caring to hear the music or see who's there; let's take long walks because we're sick of walking; and let's spend whole days in the country, just because it bores us. [23](Zenith trans.)

Since we can't extract beauty from life, let's at least try to extract beauty from not being able to extract beauty from life.

I feel as if I'm always on the verge of waking up.